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Australian Television Archive Australian Television Archive, provides preservation grade archival film and video digitisation.

15/10/2025

This video shows a behind-the-scenes look at GTS/BKN Television news stories being ingested into the ATA server — part of a major digitisation project completed last year.

Each reel represents a unique moment in regional broadcast history, now safeguarded for the future.

This material is not available on YouTube or in public archives. It forms part of the growing master archive held exclusively by the Australian Television Archive.

📽️ Access to this footage is available only through ATA’s footage research and supply service

To find more contact: mailto:[email protected]


Whatever Happened to “Broadcast Quality”?By James Paterson – Australian Television ArchiveOnce upon a time — in that now...
15/10/2025

Whatever Happened to “Broadcast Quality”?
By James Paterson – Australian Television Archive

Once upon a time — in that now-distant galaxy known as analogue television — everything that went to air had to meet the sacred standard of Broadcast Quality. Every videotape was measured, checked, and signed off by engineers who cared. If the signal wasn’t legal, it didn’t make it to air. Simple as that.

Fast-forward to today, and that phrase has all but vanished. Digital technology was supposed to improve quality, yet what we often see now is a technical patchwork of interlaced, progressive, stretched, de-interlaced and over-compressed footage — sometimes all in one program.

What really hits home is seeing archival material that once defined broadcast standards now being degraded to the point it looks like a low-bitrate YouTube upload. Case in point: ABC’s re-broadcasts of Countdown. These shows were originally recorded live on PAL broadcast masters — smooth, vibrant, and full of energy. Yet what’s now going to air has been de-interlaced and stripped of half its resolution. The motion is gone, the titles shimmer, and what was once “live television” now looks synthetic and flat.

Ironically, decades ago the BBC invested heavily in the VIDFIRE process to restore that lost interlaced “live video” look to Doctor Who episodes. Today we seem to be doing the opposite — flattening and degrading genuine broadcast masters in the name of convenience.

At the Australian Television Archive, I see this every day when restoring and digitising historic programs. True preservation isn’t about copying files; it’s about understanding and respecting the technical standards of the medium you’re working with. Done properly, standard-definition PAL video can look stunning on a modern display — crisp, fluid, and authentic. Done poorly, it’s just another lost piece of our cultural memory.

“Broadcast Quality” used to mean something. Here, it still does.

James Paterson
Australian Television Archive
Digitisation • Restoration • Research
www.austvarchive.com

🌀 Rewind to the beginning…One of the oldest tapes in the TNT9 Tasmania collection:a low-band 2-inch Quadruplex videotape...
14/10/2025

🌀 Rewind to the beginning…
One of the oldest tapes in the TNT9 Tasmania collection:
a low-band 2-inch Quadruplex videotape reel — once used for testing and alignment.

Before digital test signals… this is what engineers used to calibrate machines and align signal paths. It’s not just a relic — it’s a key to understanding how TV stations saw and measured their world.

📩 [email protected]

14/10/2025

🌟 Did You Know? 🌟 The only way to access footage from the Australian Television Archive is through our exclusive Footage Research & Supply Service. Make sure you contact us directly for authentic and high-quality content from our extensive collection!

contact: [email protected]

🔍 It’s not just about whether a VCR runs — it’s about how well it can still read the signal!Here I’m checking the head p...
13/10/2025

🔍 It’s not just about whether a VCR runs — it’s about how well it can still read the signal!

Here I’m checking the head protrusion on a broadcast VHS VCR — a critical step in understanding how much life the machine has left, and how much RF signal it can still recover from a tape.

Worn heads reduce image clarity and if worn too low read no signal at all. Some ageing tapes with weak RF output actually need a machine with better head tip contact for stronger pickup — and if you’re not checking that, you’re guessing.

This is the kind of detail that makes or breaks a proper optimised transfer.

I offer preservation-grade digitisation for professional formats like Betacam SP, U-matic, and 1-inch Type C, using fully maintained machines and deep signal-level understanding — not just playback, but recovery.

📩 [email protected]

🛠️ These machines weren’t built to last 40 years — but I’ve made sure they do!Broadcast decks like this need constant at...
12/10/2025

🛠️ These machines weren’t built to last 40 years — but I’ve made sure they do!

Broadcast decks like this need constant attention: alignment, calibration, fault-tracking. They drift. They fail. And without the right care, they ruin tapes.

The gear I use isn’t some cheap ebay find. It’s carefully restored, tested, and kept in top condition — because high-quality results demand more than just pressing play.

🎥 If you’ve got Betacam SP tapes, I offer professional digitisation using broadcast-standard equipment — preserved properly, frame by frame.

📩 [email protected]


“Problems of a Fringe Town” — When the country victorian town of St Arnaud’s news depended on which way your aerial poin...
12/10/2025

“Problems of a Fringe Town” — When the country victorian town of St Arnaud’s news depended on which way your aerial pointed.!

In the 1990s, WIN Television operated multiple viewing windows across Victoria. Each region received essentially the same news bulletin presented from the Ballarat studios, but with stories shuffled, localised, or swapped out to match the area — and different commercial breaks inserted for each market.

St Arnaud sat awkwardly between the Ballarat and Bendigo signals. Depending on which way your TV aerial faced, you’d either see the Ballarat or Bendigo edition of WIN News — meaning half the town saw one version of “local” news, and the other half saw another!

To make it even more confusing, some reports aired across multiple viewing windows while others didn’t, so the overlap was never quite consistent. If a story broke locally but was only aired in one market, half the town may have seen it while the other didn't!

Some smart residents were able to switch channels to get the signal desired - but you had to know in advance which region was going to air it!

This newspaper clipping captures that peculiar era perfectly — a time when your “local news” literally depended on the direction of your antenna.

🎞️ Preserved by the Australian Television Archive — not just film and video, but part of our growing press and ephemera collection, which documents the wider media landscape that surrounded Australian television.

👉 www.austvarchive.com

11/10/2025

🎞️ Did your business run TV ads on GTS/BKN in the '80s or '90s?

Thousands of local commercials are being uncovered and digitised — yours could be one of them.

Available exclusively through the Footage Research + Supply Service (fees apply).

To request a search or find out more contact:

📩 [email protected]


10/10/2025

📼 Cluck. Clunk. That satisfying sound of two more tapes being ejected, knowing they are now safely digitised.

Preservation in progress !

📼 Did You Know? In the tape era, every newsroom knew: videotape had limits. Tapes were reused again and again — with tal...
09/10/2025

📼 Did You Know? In the tape era, every newsroom knew: videotape had limits. Tapes were reused again and again — with tally marks scratched onto the label to track each pass. After too many re-records, the signal would break down… dropouts, glitches, static. Eventually, the tape was no longer usable.

Many of those tapes still exist today — but they’re fragile, fading, and one bad playback away from permanent loss.

That’s where I come in. I specialise in the recovery and preservation of legacy broadcast formats — using properly maintained equipment, calibrated workflows, and years of hands-on experience to extract every last frame before it’s too late.

📩 [email protected]


📼 The TNT-9 Tasmania U-matic Videotape news library has now been preserved — a rare collection of regional news stories ...
08/10/2025

📼 The TNT-9 Tasmania U-matic Videotape news library has now been preserved — a rare collection of regional news stories capturing the people, places, and events that shaped Tasmania.

This footage is available exclusively through the Australian Television Archive’s footage research and supply service

For enquiries regarding access, research, and licensing.

📩 Enquiries: [email protected]

REMEMBER TO LIKE AND SHARE!

🎞️ It looked like nothing — just a dusty reel marked “The Making of Paul Hogan.” But inside was gold: unseen behind-the-...
05/10/2025

🎞️ It looked like nothing — just a dusty reel marked “The Making of Paul Hogan.” But inside was gold: unseen behind-the-scenes footage from the original 1985 shoot of Crocodile Dundee.

The tapes were fragile. Sticky-shed syndrome had set in, and the footage was on the verge of being lost. No lab in Australia could handle it — except one.

They sent it to me.

At the Australian Television Archive, I used controlled heat treatment, surface cleaning, and calibrated 1-inch broadcast decks to recover the vision and audio — safely, professionally, and just in time.

🗣️ “To our immense delight,” wrote Delvene Delaney, “James did an exemplary job… revitalising the vision and audio to pristine condition.”

You can see vision recovered from these reels in the documentary - "Crocodile Dundee - Love Of an Icon" trailer here: https://youtu.be/JhKaFFahPjE?si=6BTTPxrBdcLy6h6I

📩 [email protected]


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Archive Digitisation Solutions

The Australian Television Archive provides a complete range of (Archival) Digital Asset Management solutions, for both the broadcast and domestic market, as well as archival consultancy, and specialist transfer and digitisation services from obsolete or aging film and videotape formats. We also hold a large archive of television material, and provide archive research and stock footage supply.

Some of the names who have recently used our services include:

- Fremantle Media Australia, - TCN Channel 9, Sydney - HBO / Jigsaw Productions, New York - Granada Media (Australia) - CBAA (Community Broadcasting Association Australia) - Blake Entertainment Pty Ltd - Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Seven Network Ltd - Network Ten Australia

....and many more